


Those Flowers Made of Light

by liketreesinnovember



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Injury Recovery, Loss of Parent(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Turtleduck(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26653084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketreesinnovember/pseuds/liketreesinnovember
Summary: Zuko, Katara, and turtleducks. Takes place shortly after the end of the series. Mostly gen, although the zutara is there if you squint.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	Those Flowers Made of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the poem "I Remember, I Remember" by Thomas Hood

Zuko tore a bit off the hunk of bread in his hands and tossed it lightly into the pond. It wasn't very good bread. The only thing he could get from the kitchens was a hardened heel, several days old. A few turtleducks sniffed suspiciously at his offering, then turned away.

"Hey, how come you're out here by yourself?"

He heard Katara's voice before she sunk down next to him, but he still flinched when he felt her by his left side. He needed to stop doing that. It seemed like she hadn't noticed, but one day someone would, and then they would ask him about it, and then he would have to talk about it.

"Um, I come out here sometimes," he said. The crusty bread was crumbling a bit in his hand. "Mai says it's stupid." He looked down at the crumbled bread in his palm, his voice rising a little unintentionally. He hated that. "It's not stupid, it's...they like it."

He looked back at the pond, the soggy, untouched pieces of bread sitting like tiny, half-sunken islands scattered among the indifferent ducks. Katara would probably scold him for being out of his sick bed. He was supposed to be resting. The bandages were beginning to chafe beneath his clothes, and she would probably want to change them soon.

"No, it's not stupid," she said earnestly, and he looked at her in surprise as she gently uncurled his fingers, took the piece of bread from his hand and tore a chunk from it, handing the other piece back to him.

Katara tossed a little piece of bread further out into the middle of the pond. Either the ducks at that end were hungrier, or Katara was doing some kind of waterbender thing, because they all came swooping in to snatch up the tiny morsel. Zuko could not tell which one had gotten it.

“How’d you do that?”

Katara laughed. “I don’t know, I guess I have the magic touch.” She tore off another piece and threw it to a different area of the pond. The ducks followed. “Sokka and I used to feed the ducks at home, except we’d give them bits of fish.”

Zuko decided that that was disgusting, and he didn’t think the turtleducks in his pond would like that, although to be fair, they also didn’t seem to like his bread very much, either. But it was also kind of nice, thinking of tiny Katara and tiny Sokka. “Did you do it with your mom?”

“Yeah,” she said, turning to look at him a bit questioningly. She was smiling, even though Zuko knew it made her sad, talking about her mom, but he thought it also made her happy, too.

“That’s what moms are like,” he said.


End file.
